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An ERROR occurred at Sage Pay which cancelled this transaction

This status message will can appear for a number of reasons when attempting to process transactions through your account.

It is important to look at the transaction, the volume of overall transactions impacted and the experience your customer has had to identify the cause of the issue and ultimately the resolution.

Individual transactions

The first thing we advise is to check whether the issue is impacting individual transactions or many. By identifying the level of impact you will be able to narrow down the cause of the issue.

Common causes

The most common causes of this transaction status for individual transactions are –

Customer Interference

Cause - If the customer has at any stage disrupted the transactional process, or clicked back on the browser this will generate the status “An ERROR occurred at Sage Pay which cancelled this transaction”.

This is commonly caused when the transaction is taking longer than normal to process, or the customer would like to make a change to their order and have clicked back to go back through to your website.

Solution – unfortunately there is not much you can do to prevent this specific cause. As this is generated by customers disrupting the transactional process you can only advise customers to stay on the payment pages until the transaction has completed.

Alternatively customers who would like to change their order should click “Cancel” on the transaction. This will take your shopper back through to your website, whilst cancelling the transaction and generating the correct status on your Sage Pay system.

Other Interference

Cause – alongside customers disrupting the transactional process there are other factors that can also cause the transaction to fail and this status to appear. These causes are more “environmental” than being driven by a person.

The most common environmental problems are –

Browser problems

Internet connection

Computer crashing

Any of these problems will prevent the transaction from completing and an error will be returned.

Solution – simply advise the customer to attempt the transaction again if they have encountered any environmental issues.

Commonly if they are having internet or browser problems they may need to speak with their Internet Service Provider (ISP) to resolve the problem, or move to another machine/device.

Authorisation timeout

Cause – when any transaction is processed through the Sage Pay system it is sent to the bank for authorisation. The bank will then authorise the transaction and earmark the funds to be taken.

Authorisations usually take a matter of seconds to be granted however it can take longer. If the authorisation takes too long to be granted it will be timed-out and the transaction will fail.

Customers who are having this specific problem will see the transaction hang on the authorisation screen of the payment process. The transaction will not complete and they will be presented with the message “An ERROR occurred at Sage Pay which cancelled this transaction.”

If you are a high volume processor and this issue impacts all transactions processed through your account it is likely related to the amount of TIDs currently active on your Sage Pay account – in this instance contact the Sage pay support team and they will be able to advise if this is the cause. For individual transactions however, try the transaction again and this will remove the need to contact us.

Solution – the solution to this error is to get the customer to attempt the transaction again.

As the error was generated due to a problem with the authorisation another attempt will allow the customer to reach the payment pages and allow authorisation to be attempted again.

Authorisation time-outs are a one off and not a consistent problem, by trying again the customer should be able to process the transaction without any further disruption.

All transactions

If you are getting this status on all transactions processed through your Sage Pay account then the cause of the problem is more likely to be one of the following –

PayPal

Cause – as PayPal is a standalone platform that links with the Sage Pay system we cannot control the performance of that system. If for any reason there is a problem with either your own PayPal account or the platform when processing transactions this status will be generated.

Solution – if this status persists for your PayPal only transactions you will need to contact the Sage Pay support team who will be able to provide more information on the cause. The team may advise you to also contact PayPal to verify there is no issue with your own account, or that there are no problems elsewhere.

Merchant Account

Cause – this status can be generated for a number of reasons specific to your merchant number on your Sage Pay account. These are –

TIDs not confirmed/added onto your Merchant Account

Merchant Account closed – no longer active and able to process transactions.

Merchant number set-up – account type

When an issue with your merchant account is the cause of this issue all transactions attempted through your Sage Pay account will be impacted. Your merchant account is used to process all transactions – with the exception of PayPal.

Alternatively, if you have recently added 3D Secure onto your account the cause may be that as opposed to your merchant account. To verify this please read the 3D Secure section below.

Solution – when all transactions processed through your account are impacted and you are not able to process any successfully you will need to contact the Sage Pay support team.

Our team will be able to look into your account and verify the cause of the status and advise you of the steps needed to resolve. This could include advising you to speak with your merchant bank.

3D Secure

Cause – if you have recently activated 3D Secure on your Sage Pay and now are unable to process any transactions this is commonly down to the information stored on your account for 3D Secure.

You can identify this as the cause by disabling 3D Secure on your account and attempting to process a transaction. If you are able to process transactions without any issues when 3D Secure is disabled the cause relates directly to the scheme.

All transactions will be impacted by this, it will not be individually specific.

Solution – the only way to resolve this is to disable 3D Secure on your Sage Pay account and contact our support teams. We will then be able to re-send your 3D Secure details for registration or re-add the information onto your account.